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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Juppé's Polemic

In an interview with today's FAZ, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé made the following, rather striking statement:

“The dissolution of the eurozone is not acceptable, because it would also be the dissolution of Europe. If that happens, then everything is possible. Young people seem to believe that peace is guaranteed for all time…But if we look around in Europe there is new populism and nationalism. We cannot play with that.”

This threat to peace is, of course, the justification for doing "whatever is necessary to ensure the cohesion of the eurozone."

Does Juppé really believe that people are still willing to buy into this transparent scare-tactic? He has simply turned the logic of current events on its head and confused cause with effect.

After all, the rise of populist parties, which Juppé cites as a threat to European peace no less, has been a response to the attempts to preserve the eurozone at all costs, with many of them using opposition to the bailouts to their electoral advantage.

The rise of anti-euro parties point to a situation in which the politics of the eurozone could become explosive. Juppé's polemic, and the mindset that gave birth to it, only makes such a scenario more likely. Shutting down or ignoring peaceful means of registering legitimate protest is the surest way to push people to extremes (though, just to be clear, populist parties around Europe are more diverse in their make-up and origin than is often understood, i.e. the True Finns and FPÖ are not the same). If voters' message is ignored, what options do they have left to register their opposition to and fears about the eurozone elite's consensus?

Former ECB board member Otmar Issing made the point in the FT earlier this month that:

"Any attempt to 'save' monetary union via agreements which transfer sovereignty to a European level, where violations of fundamental treaties have become a regular event, lacks any logic. In the end it will only further alienate the people from Europe itself...

...This type of political union would not survive. Its collapse would be brought by resistance from the people. In the past cries of 'no taxation without representation' have brought war. This time the consequence would be to threaten the collapse of the most successful project of economic integration in the history of mankind."

Similarly, in the FT this week, the standard-bearer of the German anti-bailout movement, Hans-Olaf Henkel, argued,

"Instead of uniting Europe, the euro increases friction. Students in Athens, the unemployed in Lisbon and protesters in Madrid not only complain about national austerity measures, they protest against Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Moreover, the euro widens the rift between countries with the euro and those without."

Now, talk of the eurozone crisis bringing down the entire EU with it is clearly premature at this stage and, putting it in these terms, on either side of the debate, risks upping the stakes so far as to make the argument self-fulfilling.

However, with the fiscal union versus dismantling of the eurozone choice on the horizon (however distant) the politics of this issue are only going to get more fraught until politicians start addressing the genuine concerns of their citizens. Juppé's remarks are unlikely to help.

3 comments:

The pretence that it was the EEC/EC/EU that prevented war in Europe was always nonsense, and propaganda aimed at those with no understanding whatever of such things. One thing the europhiles never told us was which European countries might have gone to war without had the EU not existed, and when. Lichtenstein v Luxembourg perhaps?

Further, Juppe's nonsense and so much else from the passing parade of self-selecting elite over 50 years - including incidentally Heath, who said on British TV "I have never understood why ordinary people bother their heads with such things - why don't they leave it to politicians?" serves only to confirm to yet more millions what has been all to obvious to many for decades, that the EU is not just undemocratic but positively anti-democratic and totally uninterested in the views of "ordinary" people. Even to the extent of enforcing decades of poverty on tens of millions of people in their attempts to keep alive their dream and our nightmare.

One thing above all they should realise - when push comes to shove, there are not tens but hundreds of millions of us and only a handful of them.

As Sir Richard Body MP replied to a constituent who had complained about our involvement in the EU, "This will not be settled here in Parliament but on the streets". As indeed it will be, before very much longer.

Emotive twaddle. Wars require conscription and the youth of today just won't play their silly games. Those few that would come forward would spend all their time running around arresting those who wouldn't.

The trouble is that no one can create a credible reason for maintaining this political construct called the common currency; it clearly is doomed. So those politicos who dream of the superstate, and the gravy train that goes with it, are forced to find other arguments for maintaining the Euro. Equally fictitious, though. Leave the EU to keep the peace and we'll have more Srebrinicas.